The Weight of the Words

Have you ever weighed words? Most of us don't, really. It's obvious in our unconsidered speech. I heard a well-known narrator on a nature show speaking about crab fishermen in Alaska tell us, "They self-regulate themselves." Now, the weight there is no big deal, but the language informs us that he wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. They can either self-regulate or they can regulate themselves, but to self-regulate themselves is straight out of the Redundancy Department of Redundancy.

I'm not too concerned about a faux pas like that. I'm thinking more of our day-to-day conversations that seem to take place without any real thought to the consequences. You share with a close friend an embarrassing event from someone else that you received in confidence and soon it's all over the internet. Gossip is a killer. Secrets rarely remain that way. But of even greater concern to me are those persistent attitudes in our communications. Have you ever been around a complainer? Everything is wrong. Everything stinks. Everyone is out to get them or doing something wrong. Even writing this begins to get me down. Stay around someone like that for long, and you'll find that everything is wrong in your world, everything stinks, and no one is doing things right. Why? It's the weight of the words.

Very few like the "pollyanna" types who see everything as rosy. It's not real. We prefer real. But ... do we? The truth is that if you spend much time around people who prefer to see the good in things, you'll likely find yourself seeing the good in things. Some people seem to have a positive outlook, and when you spend time in communication with these folks, it is infectious. It's the weight of the words.

I remember a sign one of my pastors had when I was a teen. It said, "Engage brain before opening mouth." Perhaps we ought to do that more often. What effect will the attitudes my words express have on others? Is it my goal to encourage or discourage? Paul said we should be "speaking the truth in love" (Eph. 4:15). Some of us really like that "speaking the truth" thing, and we'll clobber you over the head with it if we have to. Others of us are completely enamored with that "in love" part and are willing to fudge the truth in an ill-conceived attempt at love. Paul says we need to speak the truth and we need to do it with love. Are we weighing our words for truth and love? We ought to. Perhaps we should pray, as David did, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer" (Psa. 19:14).